Referendum in Russia: "Putin wants to have control of the political calendar"

7/1/2020, 11:18:02 PM

INTERVIEW - With the vote on the constitutional reform, the head of the Kremlin wishes to choose the moment of his exit, estimates Arnaud Dubien, director of the Franco-Russian Observatory.

The director of the Franco-Russian Observatory, a Moscow-based analysis center affiliated with the France-Russia Chamber of Commerce and Industry and supported by the business community of the two countries, is also a researcher associated with the IRIS.

LE FIGARO. - What does Vladimir Putin aim with this referendum?

ARNAUD DUBIEN. - The Russian President seems to me to have a triple objective. On the one hand, to perpetuate Poutinism by carving in marble its founding principles. On the other hand, solving the "2024 problem", the end of his fourth mandate and the date, it was thought, of his departure from the Kremlin. Finally, relegitimize power, while some signs of wear are visible, after twenty years at the head of Russia. The amendments to the 1993 Constitution can be classified into three categories: social (for example the annual indexation of pensions), “socio-historical-civilizational” (obligation for the State to defend “historical truth”, etc.) and institutional. The “resetting” of presidential terms,